If there is one thing on which all South Africans agree, it is that the creation of jobs is the foremost challenge facing our country today. It is critical not only for the achievement of a better life for all our people - employment is central to our notion of human dignity, equality and justice.

Unemployment stands in the way of our efforts to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. It undermines the achievement of sustainable economic growth, and erodes social cohesion. Unemployment may not be the cause of all our social ills, but it severely hampers our ability to effectively address them.

But, while there may be consensus on the need to create jobs, there is less agreement on how we should go about doing so. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We pride ourselves on the diversity of views in our society, and our ability to engage in vigorous debate. But we also pride ourselves on our capacity, through this engagement, to find common ground and achieve outcomes that serve the interests of all our people.

Just as we were successful in working together to define the values, principles and form of our democratic constitutional order, so too do we need to work together to determine how we can most effectively create jobs, and do so in a sustainable manner. This task stands at the centre of the National Development Plan, which was produced last year by the National Planning Commission as the basis for a nationwide engagement on South Africa's development programme for the next 20 years. It envisages the creation of 11 million jobs by 2030, and a reduction in levels of unemployment from about 25% to 6%. These are ambitious targets, and will not be realised unless all South Africans work together in a coordinated manner to implement bold and innovative measures. Debate is important. Action is critical.

In this, the government, business and labour all need to play a role. The government's works programme is an important poverty-alleviation measure that provides skills and work experience to the unemployed. There is scope to further expand this intervention. But it has inherent limitations. What the unemployed need are permanent, sustainable jobs. We need to agree on mechanisms for encouraging greater labour absorption by the private sector. These should include a wage subsidy for companies that employ young entrants into the labour market. It is necessary to ensure that it does not undermine the wages and working conditions of existing employees and does not lead to their displacement.

We need to make our economy more competitive. South African companies are having to compete with foreign companies in both the domestic and export markets. To make our companies successful, we need to reduce their costs of doing business. They must increase the value products and services they produce. We should focus on developing those sectors in which we have a comparative advantage, and which are capable of creating more jobs.

A contentious issue that we need to confront is the cost of labour. We face the difficult task of improving our global competitiveness while protecting the gains that workers have achieved over years of bitter struggle. In a country with such extreme income inequality, it is difficult to argue that workers must constrain their wage expectations. At minimum, any effort to moderate wage increases needs to begin with the highest earners in South Africa, while safeguarding middle and low earners.

A critical component of any effort to moderate wage growth is a concerted programme to reduce the cost of living. The government needs to look at how to reduce the burden on the poor in particular. The reduction of energy, transport, food and other basic costs will go a long way to reducing wage inflation.

At the same time, we need to reduce other business costs including energy, transport and telecommunications as well as costs related to unnecessary regulatory compliance. Many of these efforts are already under way. Some progress - on the regulatory front, for example - could be achieved relatively speedily. Other efforts, however, require a long-term investment in infrastructure, not only in South Africa, but in Southern Africa as well.

The most pressing task, of finding employment for a largely low-skilled population, must not undermine our longer-term goal of cultivating a working population with the skills needed to thrive in a rapidly changing, modern, global economy.

For this reason, we need to place at the heart of our job-creation efforts the achievement of quality education for all. Despite significant improvements in access to education and an increased education budget, South Africa is lagging behind comparable countries on most educational indicators. This is arguably the single greatest constraint to the creation of jobs and eradication of poverty.

We need a bold, focused and concerted effort to fix the problems in our education system - to address issues of management, school leadership, teacher competence, the teaching culture, the learning environment and the role of parents.

As we work to address all these challenges, we need to acknowledge that the government, parastatals and large companies will not create most new jobs. Jobs will be created by small and medium businesses. As a society we need, therefore, to reconsider the role and place of small and medium businesses within the economic life of our country.

For too long we have tended to view large corporations as the central drivers of economic growth. We have viewed corporate jobs, professional careers and public-service positions as the surest routes for personal advancement. Among countries at a similar stage of economic development, South Africa's levels of entrepreneurial activity are significantly low. This needs to change. We need to recognise the great opportunities that entrepreneurship presents, not only for individuals, but for society as a whole.

In most countries, small businesses create more jobs than any other sector. The 2010 Finscope Small Business Survey Report projected that the SME sector could create 2.5million jobs in South Africa by 2020. These are significant numbers that, if realised, would be making a massive dent in our unemployment figures in just eight years.

We need to significantly improve our efforts to support and facilitate the growth of small and medium enterprises. The g overnment has recognised many of the shortcomings in its efforts to date, and is working to enhance both its financial and technical support to small and medium enterprises. But the development of this sector will require more than that. There needs to be far greater collaboration between the government, the private sector and financial institutions in supporting SMEs. We need to engage with a new approach to the incubator concept. This is eminently achievable. There are several examples across the world, and even some in South Africa, of approaches to SME financing that have been able to account for increased risk and lack of collateral. These need to be multiplied.

The government has a direct role to play in reducing the regulatory burden on SMEs. Many small businesses cite the cost of compliance with business and labour regulations as a key hindrance to their growth. Other countries have demonstrated that it is possible to significantly reduce these costs and make the regulatory requirements less onerous without completely exempting small businesses from necessary regulations.

Both the government and the private sector have a role to play in improving market access for SMEs. Many struggle to get contracts from the government and corporations, who tend to prefer larger, established businesses. By simply relooking at their supply chains and their procurement criteria, the government and the corporate sector could make a significant contribution to the development of SMEs, and especially black-owned SMEs.

South Africa is defined as a middle-income country. Yet most of its people live in conditions typical of a low-income country. This suggests that our greatest problem is not that we do not have enough money, but that we have not found effective, sustainable and just ways of distributing it.

By concentrating our efforts on job creation, by each of us taking responsibility to contribute in whatever way we can to alleviating this problem, and by acting together in a common purpose, we will be able to ensure that all South Africans can enjoy the dignity, fulfilment and opportunity that comes with work. Our resolve to create jobs should be executed with a determination and speed akin to how one would save another person from a burning building.

• Ramaphosa is a businessman and a member of the ANC's national executive committee